The Revenue Commissioners secured 27 criminal convictions for serious tax evasion and fraud in 2015, according to figures released today.

Those prosecutions were on top of 2,063 summary convictions, or lesser charges, for the non-filling of tax returns and customs offences.

Headline figures for the year show the service conducted more than 461,000 individual audits and compliance investigations which yielded €642.5 million.

In seizures, Revenue logged 1,377 kilograms of drugs with an estimated value of €23.1 million, 68 million cigarettes and 2,364 kilograms of tobacco, both amounting to a value of €35.5 million.

Chairman Niall Cody said more than €45.6 billion was collected for the Exchequer from compliant sources throughout the year and the vast majority of large businesses (99 per cent) were timely and compliant with regard to payments. Similar compliance rates by medium sized companies stood at 97 per cent.

A key message pushed by Revenue is that taxpayers and businesses experiencing cash flow problems engage as early as possible with the service to facilitate remedy.

“Our results highlight an extensive range of compliance interventions, enforcement and prosecution activity, demonstrating Revenue’s determination to tackle evasion, fraud, criminality and tax avoidance,” Mr Cody said.

“Core to Revenue’s approach in 2016 will be the provision of quality services to help people be timely [and] compliant in parallel with the use of modern risk assessment and analytical techniques to identify, confront and disrupt tax evasion, fraud and avoidance.”

Revenue reported increases in each category of tax customer for the year. PAYE employments were up 4.1 per cent to 2,511,198; self-assessment returns grew by the same percentage to 665,516; companies’ corporation tax returns were up by 4.9 per cent to 175,928 and local property tax returns (LPT) were up 0.8 per cent to a total of 1,364,084.

In terms of its publication of tax defaulters policy, Revenue revealed details of 1,257 court cases and their relative penalties which amounted to €3.12 million. There were 377 settlements worth almost €77 million.

There were also 35,354 special investigations in the area of offshore accounts, bogus non-resident accounts and life assurance products which yielded €63.6 million in 2015.